The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir (17 page)

After my
lung function resumed, we continued talking about “doing oral sex” until we’d
said all we needed to say about the subject.  I knew that if she could ask me a
question like that as casually as if she were asking what we were having for
dinner, I was doing something right.

I told
Nicole that I, too, had been slightly confused by how sex and pregnancy were
connected.  To her amusement, I told her that when I was in 7
^th
grade, it never occurred to me that something actually came out of the penis
that would make a girl pregnant; I thought the penis itself was the culprit. 
In fact, I thought anything at all entering the vagina would make a girl
pregnant.  So in gym class during swim week, when my friend asked why I wasn’t
getting in the water, I said, “Because I’m on.”

“Why don’t
you wear a tampon?”

“I’m not on
the pill.”

“What does the
pill have to do with anything?”

“Because I
don’t want to get pregnant.”

There was a
long silence as she tried to connect the two apparently unrelated events.

“I don’t get
it,” she said.

Since I was
rather book smart and she was the class clown, I explained pregnancy to her in
the simplest way I knew how: “You can’t just stick stuff up there if you’re not
on the pill; you’ll get pregnant.” 

I was
sitting on the side of the pool with my legs in the water, and she was in the
pool with her arms folded over the edge.  “Oh… my… god!”  She gasped, and with
a look of delight, she pushed herself away from the edge and swam over to the
rest of the girls.  Within seconds, the entire pool erupted in laughter.

Nicole,
shaking her head in disbelief, said, “Ma, even I know there has to be a guy
involved for a girl to get pregnant.”

This is the
kind of openness we shared.  Likewise, I knew if I asked
her
a question,
she was going to give me the unadulterated, uncut answer.  So I knew not to ask
unless I
really
wanted to know.

Having an
open line of communication, however, didn’t erase the fact that Nicole was a
teenager.  She did typical teen things, but she did them in atypical ways. She
continued, even then, to jump off things.

She was 14,
and I’d told her she couldn’t go out with her friends who had come by to
collect her.  Upset, she went to her room and closed the door.  A couple of
hours later when she didn’t surface for dinner, I went to her room but she was
gone.  The window was wide open, and because our apartment was on the second
floor with no ledge, no trees, or anything that would break her fall, I was
hesitant to look. 
It’s finally happened,
I thought as I walked to the
window. 
She’s lying down there with a “broke neck.”
  But when I looked,
there was no sign of her.

I went
outside and walked around the building to the grassy slope beneath the window. 
An elderly man sitting on his patio asked, “You lookin’ for that tall gal what
come out that window?”

I was
embarrassed, but I nodded, “Yes sir.”

“Gone,” he
said, and with sheer delight he detailed the event.  “She couldn’t decide how
she was gon’ do it at first, backwards or forwards.  She sat for a spell
thinkin’ on it, legs danglin’ out the window.  Her two little gal friends was
eggin’ her on.  She finally come out forwards.  Shwoop!  Down she come.  Then
she dusted herself off, and the three of ‘em took off yonder way.”

And as he
laughed, probably tickled at hearing himself tell the story, he said, “Don’t
whip her, hear?”

Even though
I often threatened to take Nicole to Funky Town, physical punishment was
something I did very little of.  Talking worked better; it produced better
results, but I must admit that sometimes talking wasn’t enough.  And there was
one incident that Nicole would share with anyone who’d listen.  It was the day,
as she claimed, “My mother tried to decapitate me.”

Every time
she told the story, she did so with renewed passion.  First she’d wave everyone
to quiet down, and when she had their full attention, it was show time.

I came in
from school one day, and my mother was in the kitchen.  Soon as I walked in,
she started fussin’ about something; I can’t remember what.
  (Which was a lie; she
knew exactly what I was fussing about). 

So I go
in the kitchen and listen to her yap—blah, blah, blah.  I thought she was done,
so I turned to walk away
.  (Another lie, because I said to her “Don’t walk away from
me when I’m talking to you.”) 
As I’m walking through the living room,
something spoke to me—and I know it was the Holy Ghost—it said, “Nicole… turn
around.” 

I turned
around, and all I saw was the pointy end of the ironing board coming straight
for my face.
  
(Mind you, this is the same ironing board that I’d been telling Nicole to put
away for the past three days.  So when she walked away while I was still
talking, the ironing board was like a gift from the Savior.) 

I don’t
know how I moved so fast, but I ducked just in time.  The board sailed past me
and went through the patio screen.  When I stood up and turned to look at her,
she was standing in front of me with the broom, which she held to my throat,
and then she pinned me to the wall with it.  And y’all know I’m taller than she
is, so she had me up under my jaw.  I couldn’t get away, and I couldn’t breathe.

When the
laughing stopped, someone would always ask, “Nicole, what did you do that made
your mother so angry?”  And she’d say, “It doesn’t matter!  The woman tried to
kill me.”  And since she never could “remember” exactly what she’d done, it was
left up to me to explain how she’d run the phone bill up to nearly $1000.

I wish I
could say that I gave Nicole a time out that day, or that I had a civil, mature
chat with her.  Instead, it happened just like she said, and it’s probably the
closest I’ve ever gotten to actually taking her to Funky Town. 

But then
Nicole grew up.  Overnight, it seemed, she’d gone from a lanky beanpole of a
girl to a tall, statuesque goddess.  When Nicole walked into a room, people
stared at her.  Even though she was over six feet tall, she always wore heels. 
She was thin and olive-skinned, with silky hair, hazel-green eyes, very high
cheek bones, and a face full of freckles.  She was a lot to take in. 

Most people
would break the ice with one of two questions: “Where’d you get all them
freckles?”  And without skipping a beat, she’d say, “Wal-Mart.”  If they didn’t
ask about her freckles, they’d ask, “Do you play basketball?”  Nicole didn’t
like being asked that question.  “There are two kinds of tall,” she’d say,
“basketball tall and model tall.  So what is it about this fabulous body that
makes people think I run up and down a basketball court?”

Because of
the cut and angle of her eyes, some people would ask if someone in the family
was Asian.  Older Black people would simply say, “That chile’s got a little Cherokee
in her.”  And because there’s absolutely nothing exotic about me, people would
look at her, then look at me, and then look back at her, and I could see them
desperately trying to put it all together.  Nicole loved every minute of it. 
She was beautiful, she knew she was beautiful, and she expected the world to
sit up and take notice.  

Along with
her beauty, Nicole was a deeply spiritual person.  Because it was a struggle
for her to stay on track, she was overwhelmed by God’s redeeming power and His grace. 
Where some might ask, “If God is so great, then why does He allow bad things to
happen to me?”  Nicole would ask, “If God is so great, then why does He put up
with me?  How can He still love me when I can’t seem to do anything right?” 
It’s true that she did some things wrong, but she also did some things right,
and when she did things right, she did them very right.

When Nicole
was around four years old, we had gone to a function in a local park.  As we
walked among the crowd, she said, “Mommy, I wanna go home.”

“Why?”  I
asked.  “We just got here.”

“Because my
skin feels wiggly.”

Even though
she didn’t have the vocabulary to express that something was not quite right
about the environment, I knew exactly what she was talking about.  We left, and
as we were driving away, I asked her if she felt better.  She said, “Yes,” that
her skin wasn’t wiggly anymore.

Though
seldom, this happened again a few times through the years.  Whenever she would
say, “Let’s go; something here is not right,” I wouldn’t ask questions or hang
around to investigate.  But shortly after her 21
^st
birthday during a
trip to the mall, I did hang around after she’d said, “Let’s go,” and I was sorry
I did.

We went to
this particular mall usually twice a month.  We’d window shop for a while, and
then stop by the food court for lunch.  As usual, we entered the mall through
Rich’s department store, and as we walked through the store and into the mall,
Nicole began to fall back a bit.  Then she said, “Ma, I’ve changed my mind;
let’s go,” and she turned around and headed back toward Rich’s. 

I’d already
reached the leather goods store and was admiring a pair of $400 boots when I
became acutely aware that someone was behind me.  I turned around and found
myself nose to nose with a conjure woman, for lack of a better term. There was
an
un-good
presence about her.

The woman
began chanting, and I was startled, for the most part, because she was standing
so close to me that we were almost touching.  Before I could respond to her, however,
Nicole was standing next to me.  She pointed and said to the woman, “Go!”  And
immediately the woman stopped chanting and walked away.

Nicole
grabbed my hand and started walking.  She was good and upset, so I had a hard
time keeping up with her long strides.  Before we made it out of Rich’s and to
the parking lot, she abruptly stopped walking and said, “When I said, ‘Let’s
go,’ why didn’t you follow me?  And what was she saying to you?”

“She wasn’t
saying anything,” I said. She was mumbling.”

“What did
she
give
you?”

“Nothing.” By
then I was getting agitated with the mother-child role reversal, but when I held
out my hands to prove that the woman hadn’t given me anything, I was holding a
card on which were printed some kind of symbols.  I was speechless.  I hadn’t
remembered the woman giving me the card, but it was in my hand, so, obviously,
she had.

“Drop it!” Nicole
said, and I dropped it right on the floor.  We resumed our walk with Nicole
fussing under her breath, but when we reached the stillness of outdoors, I
realized that she wasn’t fussing at all but repeating, “No weapon formed against
us shall prosper.”

People who
know us knew that I prayed for Nicole, but they probably didn’t know that she
also prayed for me.  They know I am a soldier, but they likely had no clue that
Nicole was a warrior.  And as strong and capable as I
knew
she was, I
didn’t
know that the day was coming when she would lose confidence not only in her
weapons, but also in her ability to fight.

Once it was
quite clear that Nicole needed a transplant, I immediately spoke with my own
doctor and told her I wanted to be tested.  “There’s no way,” she said.  “Even
if you’re a match, your hypertension will keep you from being considered.”  

Nicole’s
aunt volunteered to be tested.  Nicole’s paternal grandmother had already
gotten a kidney from one of her daughters, and now another of her daughters was
willing to be tested for Nicole.  Somehow, Nicole will get a kidney, and life
will go on.  This is what I thought. 

During the
time we first began talking about the transplant, Nicole had moved out, but her
mail was still coming to the house.  When a letter arrived bearing a court
stamp, I called her.  “Don’t be upset, Ma, but I’m on probation.”  She asked me
to open the letter and tell her what it said. 

The letter
detailed the conditions of her probation, which included paying probation fees,
restitution, and routine visits with a probation officer.  Her offences included:
following too closely, driving without proof of insurance, and damage to public
property.  Nicole explained the details of the car accident that led to her
probation and the events that preceded it.  “That’s not all, Mommy.”  And I
felt the angst gathering in my ribcage as I braced myself for what she might
tell me.  “Moe had this good idea to make some quick money… turned out not to
be such a good idea after all.  I’m on probation for that, too.”

We had a
long talk, similar to the many long talks we had when she’d gotten off course. 
“I’m not in a good place right now, Ma, and I want to come back home.”  She
moved back in, and I was happy to have her home so I could do for her what I
did best, shore up her foundation and get her back on track. 

One
afternoon when I arrived home from work, the front door was unlocked, and
Nicole wasn’t home.  Within the hour, she called and told me that she’d been
arrested for probation violation.  “I was in my room sketching when they
knocked on the door,” she said.